The Lotus Grand Tourers

I managed to convince the family to come along to Gurston Down with a picnic and they enjoyed it . There was a great range of cars, including a Type 22 Lotus, a very pretty Ginetta and a very purposeful Clan. A couple of pictures -

The Clan belongs to Eric Morrey who is a current (2009) hill climb class champ.

It has a tiny 875cc Imp Turbo engine which hits the 9.5k rpm rev limit in the blink of an eye in every gear (Jack Knight CR box). It develops >130 bhp in less than 500kg. It did a 64 second run up Harewood hill climb at the beginnig of August which nuked the time of a space framed "busa" mini which develops more power and weighs about the same.

Unfortunately due to rule changes next year his new 998cc turbo development engine (which will be in excess of 160 bhp) will be going into a Rawlson Imp as the Clan would otherwise be put into "Caterfield" class and therefore uncompetitive (about 58 sec up Harewood).

The Clan may be made road legal and used for "development".

I love that car.......

Oh yeah...the Ginetta is a G15 with an Imp engine...very pretty (and therefore worth more) but Clans have a better (Lotus employee developed) monocoque chassis with better torsional stiffness....

Hi Peter. I thought you might like it. And it looked, sounded and went beautifully